Rohypnol Diary: Introduction

In late 2008 I went to the dentist for the first time since (I think) 1993. As such, most of the last decade was spent living in fear that any food harder than a 3 month old Girl Guide biscuit would result in me swallowing all my teeth.

It was an irrational fear given I have reasonably straight teeth (even with the wisdoms) and have never experienced so much as a tooth ache in all my years. My teeth aren’t exactly super white, but having spent their lives at the forefront of some pretty shitty habits, they’re not too bad.

But in late 2008, the gum around my back wisdom tooth had become inflamed and sore. After 2 weeks of complaining, my fiance decided I was going to the dentist. So she booked me in to see her guy – Dr. Hisham Abdalla. A laser dentist. Who uses lasers.

I love this guy. He told me I have great teeth (I tell people this a lot), but he said I had shitty gums, and that they needed to be lasered.

DR. HISHAM: ”You have shitty gums and they need to be lasered.”

ME: “OK, look, I don’t normally sweat like this, and I am not in any way what you would call a sweater, but I really don’t think…”

DR. HISHAM: “It’s a minimally invasive procedure which we can do right here in the surgery.”

ME: “Will you knock me out?”

DR. HISHAM: “Not really. We need you semi-awake. But there can be some discomfort so we’ll give you a couple of pills to make you relax, a couple of pills to dull the pain, and a couple of other pills to make you forget.”

ME: “Forget?”

DR. HISHAM: “Yeah. Forget.”

ME: “I’m in.”

Neither  he nor I was as cavalier as I’m making out. But I have wanted to try rohypnol ever since I worked as a reporter for a youth news show during the drug rape media frenzy of 2002. My colleague at the time, Vanessa, managed to get some rohypnol (The preferred drug amongst drug rapists according to One News) from a doctor she knew, which we then planned to take while documenting our experience for the public. But we never did. Partly because Vanessa was chicken, and partly because we were worried it would end up looking like a ‘how-to-drug-rape-someone’ story. But since then, I had always wondered what it would be like to black out like that.

Two weeks after my initial visit, I got my wish.

I was taken to the sedation room where I was given a glass of water garnished with a sprig of mint, and a small porcelain dish with three pairs of drugs on it. The first pair (and the largest of the three tablets) I recognised immediately as Nurofen Plus. This is what they were giving me to dull the pain. I was worried. The second set of tablets were (I think) clonazepams but I can’t be sure. However, if I had known then what I know now about clonazepams, I wouldn’t have been worried about the Nurofens. And the third set was what i assume were the roofies.

I swallowed them all and lay back in the chaise. Alicia Keys was quietly playing over the sound system.

Panic set in.

This is a weird experience to try and get your head around. Should I have been apprehensive about having to live through something I’ve been told I am going to forget? And how could they be sure I will forget it all?

It was then that I decided to keep a diary of the next two hours of my life. Two hours I remember nearly nothing of. But I have 9 pages of scrawled notes detailing the experiences and emotion of that day which I will share with you here over the coming weeks.

Don’t forget to brush.